Building a second income stream: 9/25/05

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Web Site Promotion: Getting Exposure For Your Promotional Articles

Hopefully you have followed all of the advice found online over the last couple of years about writing articles as part of your overall web site promotion plan Copyright © 2005 Ken Leonard Jr KLJ Online http://www.kenleonardjr.com

Hopefully you have followed all of the advice found online over the last couple of years about writing articles as part of your overall web site promotion plan. Since you have been spending valuable time writing articles, don't let your hard work go to waste. Give your articles the exposure they deserve so you canget all of the rewards that you deserve.

Writing a useful, targeted promotional article is the important first step. But getting your articles published by as many webmasters and ezine/newsletter owners as you can is just as important to get good results from your efforts. The wider your exposure, the larger the amount of targeted traffic that will flow to your web site. It is your job to make sure that your articles are widely distributed on a regular basis, if you wantthe same results the experts get.

It is true that you can carry on a promotional article campaign with no out of pocket expense. But manually submitting your articles to individual announcement lists and dozens of free content web sites can get very time consuming. After you do this a few times, you will see how much time it really takes. And that's after spending a substantial amount of time brainstorming, writing and editing your article first! If you are able to judge the value of your time, it will be obvious that it is costing you some serious cash doing all of your own article submissions.

Here are two inexpensive suggestions that you can use to give your articles a healthy boost of exposure, while giving you a lot more time to concentrate on activities that directly produce revenue for your home business.

First, consider hiring an article distribution service that will submit your articles to the major lists, groups and online directories for you. Adopting this practice will give you more extra time than you ever imagined. Just write your article, email it to your distributor and that's it!

Do this on a regular basis and you will see a steady rise in your web site traffic. Your site's listings in the major search engines will also improve in rank over time, if you areconsistent with your web site promotion efforts.

Paying someone to distribute your promotional articles every month is a smart approach to using articles for web site promotion. I have used just such a service for close to two years now and suggest that you do the same, if you want big results from your article promotions. Bill Platt, owner of http://www.thePhantomWriters.com does a good job of distributing my articles. His rates are very reasonable and he's a good guy, too. (I am not affiliated with Bill Platt in any way -- I'm justa satisfied customer :-)

Another good way to spend a few dollars and get some big exposure is to open a free writer's account at www.IdeaMarketers.com . After you submit an article to their free content directory (yes, you have to manually submit to this one site, but it's worth it...), you can bid on your listing's placement on the main page and subject specific index pages. For a $5-$15 bid, you can have an ad for your article (including a photo of YOU) listed prominently on this site for an entire week. Your writer's account will even show you how many hits your article has received so you can compare how one of your articles does versus another. (BTW, I am not affiliated with http://www.IdeaMarketers.com, either :-)

You will often see articles that I've written listed at the top of the main IdeaMarketers.com home page, along with other notable online marketers and writers. You will enjoy the results you get from making a small bid on your article listing, as I do. It is possible to write and submit articles for web site promotion and not spend any cash. Hopefully you now see that by spending a small amount each month to support your article promotion efforts, you can enjoy much better results than many other article writers are getting. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet Home Business Coaching Get advice YOU CAN USE to help you make a living online from home. Really serious? Then see what others are saying here... http://KenLeonardJr.com

Expand Your Sales Potential Using Affiliate Programs

What could be better than exceeding your personal sales goals for a given month or year? How about doubling, tripling or even more of you sales goal for the month? This is exactly what affiliates can do for you. The amount of growth potential through affiliates is unlimited; the more affiliates you have the more money you can make, after all, if Sam Walton tried to run every Wal-Mart store, he obviously wouldn’t be very successful. You must realize that for maximum growth you cannot do it alone. Think of the success of companies such as Avon or Home Interiors. Their success is based on two things; a great product and excellent affiliate programs.

To attract affiliates to your company you should make it worth their time. Offering one percent of sales, is not an attractive offer, the higher the commission that you are able to offer your affiliates the more affiliates will be tempted to join your team. You should also provide your affiliates with the tools that they will need to successfully market your product such as banner ads, articles, and anything else that will help them to better market the product. You should provide the affiliates with updated product information through newsletters, new promotional campaigns and other things to motivate and inform the affiliates.

You can choose to run your affiliate program in a few different ways, both of which are beneficial to your business. A one-tier affiliate program allows you to generally offer a larger commission and pays on one level. The affiliate will receive a predetermined amount for each sale. Using a two-tier affiliate program, affiliates are paid on two different levels. This is done by allowing the affiliates to recruit others to sell under them. In this situation, the top level affiliate would receive a slightly larger commission than the recruit or second level affiliate. For example if the top level seller makes 20% of the sale, then she/he would make 15% giving the second level affiliate the 5%.

Setting up the affiliate program can also be done in two different ways. One way is to do it yourself through an affiliate tracking software. This software will provide you with a way to track affiliate sales as well as allow the affiliates to view their progress. The downside to this option is that you are responsible for making payments. You can also choose to hire an affiliate tracking company to do all the work for you. These companies will allow the use of credit cards and completely run the affiliate program from billing customers, paying affiliates, and also pay you. This is a great option for the busy business owner or the beginning business owner and it is affordable as most affiliate tracking companies charge a small one time fee. However you choose to run your affiliate program it is sure to increase profits for your business.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Dick Pennington can help YOU start your own profitable business on the Internet within the next 24 hours... To learn more, visit: http://www.LearnToWinBig.com/pips.html